“I would feel that, yeah, I would have been very strong about that, particularly for the replay. Jesus, they didn’t travel at all, whether it was because it was a Saturday afternoon or what, I don’t know.

“The team deserves that support. With Mayo, look how many times they have lost All-Ireland finals and then you go outside and see the crowd there for them.

“Of course the players would be aware of it. Absolutely they would be. I saw something in the paper during the week, was it 2,500 at one Mayo game, an FBD League game?

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“Now, Jesus, to be fair, you’d have to admire them. Those guys back their team. They have nearly as far to travel to games as the Kerry supporters geographically. That wasn’t an excuse for why we lost. We lost because we were beaten by a better team. But the support was shocking, shocking.”

Sheehy made his name during Kerry’s golden era of the 1970s and 1980s.

Mick O’Dwyer was in charge for all those wins and a TV documentary chronicling the 82-year-old’s Gaelic football career was aired recently.

Sheehy’s missed penalty in the 1982 All-Ireland final defeat to Offaly, when Kerry failed to win the five-in-a-row, featured in the broadcast though the Tralee man said last year’s Mayo loss was nearly as bad.

He added: “One of the biggest disappointments I would have had outside of 1982 would have been our performance against Mayo last year, it was shocking, it was so flat.

“They were far better than us on the day and deserved to be beat us by five or six points more than they did for a finish.”

And he acknowledged that Mayo manager Stephen Rochford got all of the big tactical calls spot on.

He said: “We got it wrong on the day, just hold up your hands. There’s certain days that happens. We got it totally wrong, not alone on the field but off the field and we just had to take the criticism for that.”

Sheehy said the criticism in Kerry of the management team was ‘ferocious’ afterwards though admitted much of it was warranted.

He continued: “We got it wrong on the line and they got it 200 per cent right on the line in fairness to Mayo. And I think they were chomping at the bit from 2014 when we beat them in Limerick.”